


Shadelight

by sgteam14283



Category: Fable (Video Games), Fable 3 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Mind Games, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:57:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgteam14283/pseuds/sgteam14283
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to possess someone, the Crawler must break the spirit of its host. For Walter, it's only a matter of showing him the person he cared for the most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadelight

**Author's Note:**

> based on another fable prompt left by magicnein and a request by sweettartsloveryo on Tumblr to write it. Also we never did quite see what the Crawler showed Walter to possess him so easily, IMO the Crawler had to break someone's spirit before possessing/taking them, so this is my take on what he showed Walter. Don't own anything you recognize and enjoy!

Darkness.

Darkness had swallowed him and no matter how hard Walter tried to see there was nothing but an inky black; it was like a thick goo that was binding his hands and feet.

Ever since him, Sparrow, and Swift had been stuck in a cave for three bloody days while fighting those still loyal to Lucien he’d hated the dark. In the dark there were secrets and betrayals and he hated it with a passion. 

Opening his mouth he tried to yell for Andrea but nothing came out. Taking a struggling breath, he wondered where she was-what had happened. The last thing he remembered was that he was going to jump down to join her and then it all went black.

“ _I have to make sure she’s alright, that that..._ thing _didn’t get her._ ” Walter dimly thought as he tried to move his hands and feet but was unsuccessful. He didn’t know why he still felt protective over Andrea, she’d more than proven that she could handle herself by now. She was her mother’s daughter after all.

At that thought, Walter felt a dull stab in his stomach. They had lost Sparrow and her husband to soon. “ _Maybe if those bloody balvarine’s hadn’t ganged up on them and she’d remembered to stock up on health potions-_ ”

“Walter.” 

Walter looked up at the familiar voice, his breath catching. Seeing the tall woman in front of him, Walter felt his eyes go wide. It had been a long time since he had last seen that face, but at the same time it felt like no time had passed at all. “Wha-how-am I...dead?” Walter asked suddenly wondering if he’d misjudged the height of the drop and while it might have been almost nothing for Andrea, it had killed him.

Sparrow laughed, sending shivers down Walter’s spine, “No, you’re not dead.” 

“Then what-”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Sparrow interrupted Walter as she brushed a piece of her long brown hair out of her face. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because you failed me.”

Walter could see the will lines along her body softly lighting up and he was confused. “Failed you? How?”

“Because you said you’d keep her safe! That you’d keep both of my children safe!” Sparrow yelled, her will lines suddenly glowing a bright blue. “And now look what’s happened, you’ve torn them apart. And for what? For some silly revolution that you think needs to happen?”

“But-”

“No! _You’re_ the one who took her out of the castle, you’re the one who let her get beat up by mercenaries, you’re the one who let Logan hunt Andrea down like a _common criminal_ and sent her off to some godforsaken land because a dead man sent you a note! I trusted you to take care of them, to make sure they didn’t have to live without one another like I had to do after Rose was killed.” Sparrow shook her head, looking away from him. “You let me down Walter.”

Walter wanted to reply, that Logan had lost all sense of what it meant to rule and that he was no longer the man that Walter had once known. That he wasn’t a hero, he was a tyrant. But Andrea _was_ a hero after all and could take down her brother and restore the monarchy to what it had been when Sparrow ruled...but he just couldn’t form the words.

Because he knew Sparrow was right. 

He had torn apart siblings who cared for each other and pitted one against the other in a gamble. While he felt that Andrea could overthrow Logan, at the same time he didn’t know if she could rule. She’d never been trained in statecraft and while she knew more about the outside world than before, there was still so much that she didn’t know.

And Sparrow, the one he’d fought with, drank with, loved was right. It was a desperate gamble with the very likely chance that they could fail and their heads would be the price for that failure.

Slumping down Walter hung his head in shame. “I’m...sorry.” he whispered, closing his eyes as he felt tears start to form. 

“It’s too late for that Walter.” He heard Sparrow say as she pulled out her clockwork pistol and aimed it at him. Looking up as she pulled the trigger he saw the image of Sparrow dissolve and was replaced with that... _creature_ that he’d seen after relighting the torch.

Suddenly his eyes burned, the pain ripping through his head like a cleaver. Throwing is head back Walter yelled in pain, trying to move his hands to get at whatever was causing his eyes to feel like they were burning but once again couldn’t move them. Time seemed to stretch on forever until the pain suddenly stopped and Walter slumped down, drained from whatever had just happened.

As he sat on the stone floor, dimly aware of Andrea suddenly appearing and trying to get him up, he kept playing over what the ghost had said to him. 

_You failed me._


End file.
